The View From Planet Kerth: Model homes force a welcome to the New Stone Age

Citizen Contributor,T.R. Kerth

3:55 PM, Mar 3, 2014

I spend a lot of time in model homes. Way more time than a man should have to spend in one, especially since I live in a home less than five years old.

But the problem is that I don’t live in that new home all by myself. I live in it with a wife who has shared one home or another with me for the last 45 years, and she likes to visit model homes — even if the home we are currently living in suits us fine and might be newer than the model.

But as they say, “Happy wife, happy life,” so I spend a lot of time in model homes. With her. Trying to make sure that she isn’t signing papers with a real estate agent behind my back and then coming home to tell me that we should start packing.

I don’t really know why she loves visiting model homes so much. Maybe it’s just to see if we might be doing better than we are currently doing — another reason I go with her, just in case there may be other men hanging around those models. I know she could be doing better in that department, but that’s a secret I’d rather keep her from realizing.

Or maybe she likes to hang around model homes to see what’s going on this week in the home décor department. She does spend a lot of time gazing at the wall treatments, or the color schemes or the cabinet handles.

But I don’t know why she would want to study any of those things in the models, because to my way of thinking the home builders should be hiring her to provide the finishing touches. She has always had a knack for interior décor, and even if one of her ideas sounds crazy when she explains it to me, it always blows me away when I see her hang it on the wall or stand it in the corner.

But lately I’ve started to worry about our visits to the models, because my wife has been spending way too much time caressing the granite countertops. And these days there’s no chance that you will go into a new model without finding granite countertops. Or tile floors. Or marble backsplashes.

Because when it comes to keeping your home current and up-to-date, welcome to the New Stone Age. You’re not really living in a modern home unless you’re a neo-cave dweller.

I finally relented and had some guy come in to take a look at our countertops and let us know how red my bank account would bleed if we wanted to fully stonify our kitchen.

The guy walked into the kitchen to take a look around with a tape measure, and he was polite enough to say, “Wow, your counters look pretty good as they are.” My wife wasn’t in the room at the time, or he’d have limped back to the car. Missing an eye or two.

“Yeah, that’s what I think,” I said to him. “But my wife has a different opinion about it, so guess which way that discussion is going to go.”

He nodded knowingly. As a man who valued his knees and eyes, he knew better than to press the point. ‘Nuff said. He started measuring.

Now, I have always applied the Miller Test when it comes to assessing whether or not we needed new counters. I’ll open a can of Miller Lite and set it on the counter. If the beer sloshes out of the spout because of the acute angle, or if the can slides off the edge of the counter and clatters to the floor, it’s time for new counters. Otherwise, we’re doing just fine.

My wife seems to apply some other test. And it looks as if I’m going to have to defer to her New Stone Age findings — even though it’s going to cost us about as much as I earned my first year as a teacher in 1971.

I know I’m not alone in my misery, because every time I bring the subject up with other neo-cave men, I get the same welcome-to-the-club shrug and resigned grin. Some of them wonder how I managed to hold out for so long.

But I guess it could be worse, because plenty of their wives carry this whole stone-age mentality a lot further than my wife does. A lot of them have some pretty hefty rocks clattering on their fingers, spangling around their neck or dangling from their ears. When I see them with their twinkling pebbles, I wonder how their New Stone Age husbands resist the urge to hoist a club and go all Alley-Oop on them.

My wife has been satisfied with the stone I gave her 45 years ago, and she hasn’t asked me for more knuckle-nuggets to clutter up the neighborhood.

So as long as the shiny stone she has her eye on is opaque, flat and solid enough to support my Miller Lite can for the rest of my life, I guess I’m OK with finally entering the New Stone Age.

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The author splits his time between Naples and Chicago. Not every day, though. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Why wait a whole week for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Get T.R.’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine online book distributors.